Human–AI Co-Creation in Film Production: Media Innovation and Aesthetic Governance in AIGC-Supported Filmmaking
Main Article Content
Keywords
AIGC, media innovation, film aesthetics, human–AI co-creation, creative governance
Abstract
Generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) is rapidly transforming film production by introducing new modes of media innovation and aesthetic experimentation. Rather than functioning merely as a technical substitute, AIGC reconfigures creative workflows through diverse forms of human–AI co-creation. This paper examines how aesthetic decision-making, creative control, and cultural meaning are negotiated within AIGC-supported film production. Drawing on a comparative case study of the Chinese AI-assisted short film The Cipher in the Notes and the Singapore–Malaysia co-produced feature film Madame Ching, the study analyzes two contrasting production pathways: constraint-based generation for historical reconstruction and prompt-driven generation for stylized visual innovation. Using textual analysis and production documentation, the paper compares the cases across four dimensions: stages of technological intervention, human–AI division of labor, configuration of aesthetic control, and cultural–semantic calibration. The findings reveal that AIGC enables novel forms of visual experimentation and accelerates aesthetic iteration, while simultaneously shifting the director’s role toward the governance of generative aesthetics. However, both cases expose shared challenges related to realism, cultural specificity, and ethical governance. By foregrounding media innovation and aesthetic processes, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on creative authorship, visual culture, and responsible AI adoption in contemporary media production.
References
- Barthes, R., (1977). Image-Music-Text, (Vol. 6135). New York, NY: Macmillan.
- Baudrillard, J., (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
- Bazin, A., (1967). What Is Cinema? Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
- Fan, Y. S., (2025). AI-driven restructuring of China’s film industry ecosystem: A study on the driving forces of transformation and the mechanism of factor flow. Academic Research, no. 6, pp. 47-52.
- Floridi, L., (2014). The fourth revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Goodfellow, I. J., Pouget-Abadie, J., Mirza, M., Xu, B., Warde-Farley, D., Ozair, S., Courville, A. and Bengio, Y., (2014). Published. Generative adversarial nets. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Red Hook, NY,. Curran Associates, Inc., pp. 2672–2680.
- Ho, J., Jain, A. and Abbeel, P., (2020). Published. Denoising diffusion probabilistic models. Advances in neural information processing systems, Red Hook, NY. Curran Associates, Inc., pp. 6840-6851.
- Jenkins, H., (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collid. New York University Press.
- Jenkins, H., (2012). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. London: Routledge.
- Manovich, L., (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Stability AI Midjourney & DeviantArt Litigation, (2023). Class action complaint [Online]. Available: https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/ [Accessed 6 February 2026].
- Xiao, X., (2024). The boundaries and aesthetic characteristics of AI art enabling film creation from the perspective of artistic truth. Movie Literature, no. 8, pp. 40-46.
- Yao, R., (2025). AI playwriting from the perspective of film industry aesthetics: Theoretical stimulation, practical coupling, and problem generation. Ethnic Art Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 88-95.
- Zhao, Y., (2023). Human-computer Co-creation, data fusion and multimode model: Film art and cultural industry criticism of generative AI. Contemporary Cinema, no. 8, pp. 15-21.
- Zhou, W., Liu, W., Guo, F. and Chen, H., (2024). AI, film, AI film, and discussions about the future. Contemporary Cinema, no. 5, pp. 4-13.
Article Sidebar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.